Ahhhh Young Love

It's cute now. Ten more years and he'd better run fast.

            When I was Chris’ age, my Grandpa Don would put his hand on my leg, just above my knee and squeeze. If I laughed or squealed, that meant I was boy crazy. I was so ticklish that he barely had to make the hand-squeezing motion and I would dissolve into a pile of giggles. Oh, and I was also majorly boy crazy.

            In Chris’ case no leg-squeezing test is necessary. I think she popped out of the womb primping for her first date.

            More than once I’ve eavesdropped on conversations between Chris and her much, much older friend Jasmine who is “like 8, Mom, and she still spends time with me!” The first time I heard it I had to choke back my guffaws because you’d think those two were a couple of stay-at-home housewives killing time over a cup of coffee until their soap operas started.

            “Sooooooo, tell me about the boy you like,” Jasmine asks as they ride their scooters past the bench where I’m not hovering. Just taking the dogs for a little walk. I swear.

            “Well,” Chris replies, waving her hands around excitedly. “He’s IN THE SECOND GRADE and his name is Jake.”

            “He sounds cute,” Jasmine says. Well duh, he is an older man.

            Not long ago Chris told me about three of the guys she currently likes – two she likes at the same time as her friend Mikayla because your friend's approval is necessary criteria. When I prod her to explain why exactly these boys have caught her eye she just gets embarrassed and says, “You know!”

            “Because he’s cute?” I ask.

            “Yes!” she yells. “Now leave me alone! You’re embarrassing me!”

            Well that is in my job description.

First love triangle. Don't worry it worked out well. She chose the cake.

            But she can’t help it. She’s so boy crazy that she must drone on about all the boys she likes, even at the risk of embarrassing herself. One boy, she tells me, is a mystery to her. She and Mikayla don’t even know his name but they see him all the time in the library (smart boy – Mommy approves) and they get so scared that they just go “tee hee, tee hee” because they don’t know what to say. Those are her words, not mine.

I feel kind of bad for the kid because she’s not used to having to work for what she wants. Like many girls with only-child syndrome, she can’t fathom a world in which men don’t swoon at her feet as if she were Cleopatra.

        That’s not to say the love-bug doesn’t bite the boys too. Not long ago Chris and I spent the day with Landon, who is two years younger than Chris. The next day Landon told his mother he wanted to see Chris again and when she told him it wasn’t possible he said very matter-of-factly, “But I love her.” I imagine it was much the same way he might say he loves waffles or the Power Rangers, but nevertheless it’s difficult to resist her gravitational pull. One day was all it took for him to fall under her spell.

Already feeling the heat. Feels like choking.

        The “more mature” boys that Chris does drag into her web seem somewhat dazed by her overwhelming personality. She’s already learned how to be bossy and nags them into submission. So it’s usually the ones who don’t have a shot that will put up with her tyranny. The ones Chris likes are fortunately out of reach. And fortunately they are also oblivious to her charms.

         A few months ago at a parent’s lunch at her school, Chris proudly pointed out her crushes on the playground. As they were firmly ensconced in a game of kickball they never looked her way, which is how I remember it going down all those years ago when I was so boy crazy.

        And that’s just fine with me. Right now it’s all so sweet and innocent too. It’s funny to watch, if not a little pathetic since I know a little bit about what her future might hold. I know there will be lots of heartbreak down the road. I know there most likely will be pimply boys ringing our doorbell and voices breaking up over the telephone. I know there will be a LOT more giggling and excited whispering with her friends.

        Right now, though, I’m happy that she loves from afar. Very afar.        

Still Daddy's Little Princess. Let's just leave it that way for now.

  

The Scent of Broken Promises

She smells like strawberries. I, however, do not.

           Did you ever wonder how broken promises smell? Wonder no more! I can tell you from personal experience that broken promises smell like a sweaty linebacker who has attempted unsuccessfully to cover the stench by bathing in cheap cologne.

            Allow me to explain.

            You see, my kid talks a lot. Yes, yes, soon we’ll make the leap together from motor mouth to migraine-inducing odor. As I was saying, my kid talks a lot. At home I can tune it out, but in class with 23 other kids also vying for attention, I’m sure her teacher is keenly aware that Chris is one of the loudest. So far every single correspondence we’ve had with a teacher since the beginning of her education has read, “Chris continues to excel academically. But she still needs to work at not talking during quiet times.” They might have just printed up a whole stack of these reports at her birth.

            I know she’s smart and it’s tempting to blame her big mouth on being bored in class. But what my father drilled into my own developing skull years ago is that there simply is no excuse for not following classroom rules. If he had raised her, it would be “respect your elders and speak only when spoken to.” I don’t go quite that far, but I have tried to impress upon her that it’s incredibly disrespectful to distract the teacher and the rest of the class that is trying to learn something you may already know.

            At heart Chris is a good kid. She knows there are certain times she is supposed to be quiet in class but for some reason she just can’t help herself. Must….talk…can’t….keep…mouth…closed.

            So we’ve tried grounding. We’ve tried withholding TV and toys. We’ve tried the disappointment speech and the angry speech and come pretty close to begging. I mean, I don’t want her to be branded the kid who won’t shut up, because you know those teachers warn one another about their little, uh, angels.

            Finally, we resorted to bribery. Yeah, I admit it, I bribe my kid.

            “If you can make it through one whole month with good behavior reports, we can do something special that you choose,” was my final resort.

            “Ooooh, maybe I can have Icees every day for a month!” was Chris’ first choice. Since I’m so smart I realized that daily frozen colored sugar water would only compound the problem and I nixed that idea. Instead, I urged her, she should choose an activity like a movie, or a zoo visit, or even a trip up north to go sledding.

            “OK, stop!” She said. “I know exactly what I want to do. I’ve wanted to do it my whole entire life. I want you to take me ice skating. Pinky promise.”

            Uh, what? Ice skating? Not something I imagined I’d ever do again in my life after the one feeble attempt in high school in which I couldn’t even stand on the skates and gave up after about three minutes. Plus, I suspect she really only wants to go ice skating because she thinks that means she will be wearing a sparkly outfit like those girls she saw in the Olympics.

I don't smell like this either.

“But what the hey,” I thought. “It’s not like I have to worry about it. I mean, it’s been a year and a half and we haven’t made it through three weeks without a negative behavior report because of talking.”

            I should have had more faith in my kid, because lo and behold, she did it. The month of December sealed the deal and filled me with terror. Can you imagine me on ice skates? You’ve seen my version of walking (tripping) and I can’t afford any more ER visits. Plus, I can just imagine the Richter scale baffling local scientists every time I hit the deck. Double plus, I really have no desire to look at the ceiling of the ice rink that many times.

            So I put it off. Then put it off some more. Then Christmas and New Year’s came and went. Suddenly I had no more excuses and felt like a pretty crummy parent when Chris wailed in the car, “When are you going to take me ice skating? You pinky promised!”

            Ugh.

            But then fate stepped in with the perfect excuse. Bronchitis! I honestly tried to get up the gumption to take her ice skating, I swear. But I couldn’t make it on a short walk with the dogs to the mailbox without a major coughing fit. So, reluctantly I told Chris we’d either have to put off her ice skating dreams another week or two, or she could choose something else.

            “Choose something else!” I silently willed her.

            After a lot of back and forth, she finally chose a girl’s day – lunch out with just the two of us and maybe a little shopping. This I could handle. Besides, the kid desperately needed new shoes of the unscented variety (she has chronically stinky feet).

            So today we waited impatiently for the mall to open and then hit the road. She counted out her savings of nickels and dimes for a pair of ice cream cone earrings. We agreed after much arguing on a pair of non-high-heel shoes (Seriously! She’s 6! Why on EARTH are all the kids sandals made with wedge heels?!)

            As we were making our way out of the department store, I told Chris to hang on while I made a quick glance around the purse clearance section. No problem, she said, as she wandered an aisle or two over and unbeknownst to me sampled not one, not two, but at least five different varieties of perfume.

            Let it be a lesson to you, if you remark, “Whew! Someone really went overboard with the cologne!” and your normally vocal child doesn’t comment, you are in for some trouble. It’s not your imagination; everyone in the checkout line really is staring at you and talking about you – or rather your kid’s aroma. It hit home for me when she touched me on the cheek to get my attention while we were waiting for the cashier and my eyes began to water.

            “It was you!” I spat out. “You’re the one who sprayed the perfume!”

            “Only a little bit,” she said. Yeah right.

Give it up. A bath won't turn back time.

            I got her out of there and into the car before a HazMat team was called. Big mistake. I rolled down the windows but Eau De Everything had already permeated the fabric seat cushions. I plugged my nose and pulled into the Target parking lot where I drug her into the bathroom and told her to wash her hands. Meanwhile, I soaked four paper towels with water and rubbed at her neck.

            “You know, it only takes one squirt of cologne,” I told her as I tried to hold her down. I guess it tickles when you rub a paper towel on your neck.

            “I did do one squirt. Just of a lot of different kinds. I couldn’t decide which one I liked the best so I tried them all,” she replied. No duh. I could smell “them all”.

            After all that, I assumed we had solved the problem. But we barely made a dent and I had to chew gum since the scents were making me sick. When we finally arrived home I quickly agreed that she could ride her bike, thinking the fresh air might blow off the stink. But it was apparent that wouldn’t work either as a kid on his skateboard constantly kept moving upwind from her.

            Soon, I could take it no longer and drug her inside to shower. I scrubbed her neck again with a rag that I constantly had to keep wringing out since it was drenched with toilet water. Eventually we got the job done. But after all her protestations that she didn’t need a bath that she already smelled good from all the perfumes, I had to come out and say it, “No you don’t. You really, really stink.”

            Chris looked me square in the eye. I thought she might cry or be offended. But she simply blamed it all on me.

            “It’s all your fault,” she said. “This never would have happened if you had taken me ice skating.”